


Fear Sídhe

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cows, Fae & Fairies, Family, Heavy Angst, Ireland, Lost Love, M/M, Middle Ages, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 16:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9557525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: As death rages all about an ordinary young man, a man of the fairy mounds appears to him to bring him the news that he will be the only one of his family to survive, and to offer him eternal life — and love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apirateapoetapawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apirateapoetapawn/gifts).



Another soft day it had been. The air did not bite sharply at this hour, yet Fionn tugged his brat tighter round himself to keep out the damp, then refastened the brooch. The heifers nosed at the wet wool, their neck-bells rattling, and he ran a fond hand over each of their heads and Deas’s too.

Not a bad day’s-end, it was, and soon it would be not a bad autumn’s-end. The rye and the barley heaped high in the haggard, the pigs would come in from the woodland well-fatted, and the heifers and dairts grew apace. As different as chalk from cheese it was from his da’s day, when the fields and pastures lay in ashes and the skin clung close to the bones on beasts and men.

The day’s-end had for his cousins come well before, each now back in his da’s house and his cattle in their bawn. The staying on the commons until the dusk was a habit of Fionn’s, even in the softness; he liked the quiet of the hour, the shifting of the light, the queer feeling when it was not quite the day and not quite the night, a time in between.

As often he did at this hour, he thought of Crimthain. Down in Port Láirge his foster-brother was, him and his golden voice shut in behind yellow walls and the Normannaigh all about. _It’s an honour, a Fhinn, so it is,_ his foster-sister Sláine had said. _Our Crimthain is a man of Christ now, and he do be lifting his pretty voice to Christ in that great church they built in it._

And sure, Fionn knew that, and sure, his heart was glad for Crimthain, who was never after wanting wife or sons or land, only to sing for as long as he’d breath — and if Crimthain was not as pious as his cradle-sister it was no great matter, for neither were a great many other churchmen. But, ah, Fionn missed Crimthain’s voice trailing to him across the commons, Crimthain’s voice singing of cows and sheep as he dandled one of Sláine’s or their other sister Úna’s babes on his knee, Crimthain’s voice soft as the day had been with Fionn’s head in his lap and Crimthain’s long fingers in Fionn’s hair…

A cry, not far away. Like as not it was but a fox, yet Fionn shivered with the sound. He’d heard the bean sídhe once only before in his life, the night before his ma went to Jesus birthing Dearbháil — many year ago, now, but he’d always remember how her voice raised the flesh on his arms and the hair on his nape, so he would. And there was a queer echo of it in the fox’s cry.

The sound again, closer now, and much less like that of a beast. Bramble-vines of ice curled up round Fionn’s spine and pricked into his innards. The third cry was when he had the knowing of it for sure. _Who?_ Name after name rose up in his mind, all but one, and after each the prayer, low and fearful: _Please, Jesus, not Crimthain. Please, Jesus, not Crimthain._

The sun’s last rays touched upon the birch-stand to the west, setting flame to something that wasn’t the leaves. And there was green in it, too, and not the green of the tree. The bean sídhe stepped forward —

— and sídhe the newcomer may have been, but no bean was he.

“A Fhinn,” he said in a soft voice that stirred Fionn like Crimthain’s lips against his ear had stirred him, may Jesus forgive him for thinking of that now. The fear sídhe brushed twig-tangled red locks out of his chalk-white face and went on: “A Fhinn Uí Cheinnselaig, mac Énda meic Fearadhach.”

“Ah, now, who will be taken from me?” whispered Fionn, his dread winning out over his lust.

The fear sídhe’s eyes were large and pale. Handsome eyes they were, and sad. “All of them,” said he.

Fionn blinked, and blinked again. “‘All of them?’ I do not twig.”

The long tunic the fear sídhe wore was the deep green of moss, and over it his brat was a lively madder-red, worked all about with thread of silver. Though it was pinned with a silver brooch, and though there was no wind just then, it flared out all behind and about him and above his head as he stepped closer to Fionn. Marks glinted silver on its borders, marks Fionn could not read — any more than he could read the marks of the churchmen or of the Normannaigh — but he knew they were not of Christ, they were far older than Christ. He shivered again.

“The bás dubh,” said the fear sídhe. “T’will take all your finè. All but you, a Fhinn mac Énda.”

“T’will not, to be sure,” said Fionn, his voice rising like the fear sídhe’s brat, his heart coursing like a hound. “It besets filthy Normannaigh and Sasanaigh in their filthy cities with the streets running with piss and shite. ’Tis Christ’s judgment upon them, is the plague.” He thought of Crimthain again, among the Normannaigh. Would Christ, who had struck them down in great numbers last year and this, shield his foster-brother from their filth?

As his brat settled down about him again, the fear sídhe shook his bright head and smiled sadly. “Ah, a plague is no judgment, no more than the mountain beneath our feet. It simply is. It breeds in the cities, ’tis true, in the vermin that live off men. But men bring it to the countryside, to the mountains. The relic from your foster-brother Crimthain mac Diarmata, put into the hands of his cradle-sister not three days ago? The letter he sent you, the one you had Brother Tomás read to you straightaway?”

“What of them?” demanded Fionn, his heart coursing harder. He’d kept the letter in his belt-pouch since his cousin Mathghamhain had brought it to him, and now he could feel it through the leather, though he could not feel the coins or key or whistle-reed he carried with it.

“Before the trader who brought them left Port Láirge, he’d dealings with another man, who paid him to bring a letter to a relation in Kilkenny. At that meeting the second man seemed hale, but the sickness waxed in his breast and he fell ill later that day. Then the trader rode into these mountains with the sickness in his own breast. He too seemed hale enough when your cousin Mathghamhain mac Dhónaill took the relic and the letter from him and breathed in the sick air he breathed out. Then your cousin went to the house of Fiachra mac Mhaoilín, husband to your foster-sister Sláine Ní Diarmata, to bring her the relic, and in the same manner she breathed in his breath and so did her babes. Then she went to show the relic to your other foster-sister, Úna Ní Diarmata Bean Mhic Ceallaigh, and she and her babes all breathed in Sláine’s breath. You did not see Mathghamhain on the commons today, did you, a Fhinn?”

“I did not,” said Fionn in despair. “Cárthach said this morning Mathghamhain was after feeling poorly. Flushed and warm, coughing, too jaded to rise from his pallet though he’d slept all the night…”

“And by afternoon, his coughs were spattering the hides with blood — and in her house, within the same hour, Sláine Ní Diarmata Bean Mhic Mhaoilín began to grow warm and fatigued and to cough, and she lay down on her pallet with her littlest babe for fear she’d not have the strength to rise from it to answer his cry. As for Cárthach mac Dhónaill, he too breathed in what his brother Mathghamhain breathed out. Will I go on, a Fhinn, or do you twig now?”

“Crimthain,” whispered Fionn. A question, a prayer.

“Four days dead, is Crimthain mac Diarmata,” said the fear sídhe softly. “The bells of the great yellow church in Port Láirge ring for him, and for many others, consecrated to your Christ or not.”

Fionn spun away from the unbearably soft and handsome eyes to stare out over the deepening gloam to the east. Then he spun round again and asked hoarsely, “Mathghamhain brought me Crimthain’s letter, and I must have been after breathing in his breath. Why will the bás dubh not take me, a fhear sídhe?”

“Not all who breathe it in sicken of it,” said the fear sídhe. “Just as not all who sicken die from it. And only the sídhe know who will live and who will die. Maybe your Christ, too, though I can’t say as to that. We sídhe have no say in it, only the knowing of it.”

Fionn laughed bitterly. “So, ’tis myself who’ll live, alone of all of them? Myself who’ll have to dig the támh-leacht, put all the men and women and children into it, and perhaps the poor beasts either? Myself living all alone in the ráth and on the mountain, to pine and to starve?”

The fear sídhe shook his fiery head and said, “No, t’won’t be. Come you with me now. Come you away with me tonight, a Fhinn mac Énda, to the Tír na nÓg, where sickness will never touch you again, nor grief, nor privation, nor age, nor death.”

He stepped closer, then, and it was then too the evening wind began to rise. It caught his locks of bright hair and drew them upward like his brat. Fionn thought of the breeze rippling through Crimthain’s bright hair, the same softness and hunger in Crimthain’s pale eyes. His loins ached again, even as his heart cracked in his breast. Why had Christ taken golden-voiced Crimthain, and Crimthain’s prayerful cradle-sisters and their innocent babes, and generous Mathghamhain and good-natured Cárthach — and spared a wretch such as Fionn mac Énda whose cock could not let him grieve in peace?

“Hold now,” said he, his voice hitching; “may I not say farewell to them? Not a one of them?”

The fear sídhe seized Fionn’s hand in a chalk-white one that surprised Fionn with its warmth, for all that its grip was pitiless. “Would you see them all as they are now, a Fhinn?” asked he, his voice as cold as his hand was warm. “Spewing their hearts’ blood, senseless with fever, no breath but only spit rattling in their throats? Or dead on their pallets or in their cradles, or on the floor or grass where they dropped, eyes unshut and wide, skin the colour of sloes, mouths wrenched in pain and garments drenched in blood?”

The hairs stood up on Fionn’s nape, and his mouth and throat tasted of dust. More softly now, the fear sídhe continued: “Or would you remember them as they were when they were hale, when you worked and prayed and feasted with them, when they embraced you and called you cousin or brother or son — or beloved?”

Fionn swallowed. “Would I come with you, a fhear sídhe, who would bury them? Who would keen for them, or say their last rites? Brother Tomás — is he taken, either?”

“He is,” said the fear sídhe. “None will bury them, a Fhinn, or give them rites or keen for them. When the last of them has gone to your Christ, any beasts who yet live will be driven off, out of the ráth and off the mountainside. Then all that remains will go up in flame, that not a drop of the contagion escape. Not a bone on the ground will remain whole and white. Their ashes will nourish the soil that, one day, another finè will till. They will live on in the apple and the leek, in the rye and the barley, in the rowan and the yew.”

Fionn pressed the back of his free hand to his eyes and brought it away wet. “I … may I say goodbye to my cows, at least, if it please you? Whether they will live or — or not?”

One corner of the fear sídhe’s mouth quirked upward, and he loosed Fionn’s hand. “Sure, you may.”

He took his time with it, cradling the two heifers to his sides, one under each arm, murmuring that they were the best of girleens and they’d find themselves another good pasture, another good bawn, and they’d grow up big and strong like their dam and would bear calves as lovely as themselves. They nuzzled his brat and rattled their bells. Then he threw his arms about Deas’s snow-white neck and thanked her for her milk, her calves, her sweet and silent company down the years. She nuzzled him in reply, and though he knew better he eased himself with the thought that she twigged, and so the heifers did too.

At long last, he turned back to where the fear sídhe stood waiting and said, “Have you a name to you, or am I to be calling you ‘a fhear sídhe’ until … until the mountains crumble into the sea, I suppose?”

The fear sídhe smiled again, and there was no sadness in it this time. In the sweet curve of his lips, too, Fionn saw Crimthain.

“I am called,” said he, taking both of Fionn’s hands in his warm own, “Aodhán.”

“Aodhán,” echoed Fionn, curling his fingers round the edges of Aodhán’s palms. “How will we go to the Tír na nÓg, a Aodháin? Do you take me to a barrow now, or to a lake, or down to the sea?”

“None of those things,” said Aodhán. He tilted back his head, then, and parted his lips, and out of them came Crimthain’s golden voice, but singing not to Christ; singing not in words Fionn knew, or in the Latin, but in a tongue that seemed familiar and not familiar at once, like a dream. And though the breeze had since died down, Aodhán’s brat rose about him again, and the silver marks began to writhe like serpents against the wool. The thick red pleats enclosed the two of them at their centre, like the petals of a great rose, and before they shut out the first of the stars that were after coming out in the heavens Fionn Uí Cheinnselaig, mac Énda meic Fearadhach, learnt that the breath of a fear sídhe was sweeter than mead, sweeter almost than the breath of his foster-brother, and that his lips were even warmer than his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine’s Day, apirateapoetapawn!
> 
> This story is set in early autumn 1349, in the [Comeragh Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comeragh_Mountains) near Waterford (Port Láirge). The Black Death (Irish _bás dubh_ ) had [come to Ireland just over a year before](http://www.historyireland.com/medieval-history-pre-1500/unheard-of-mortality-the-black-death-in-ireland/), almost certainly via Dublin. There and in Drogheda just to the north, it raged until year’s end and spread to surrounding areas. In 1349 it began to afflict the southern and southeastern ports and thence move inland. Plague struck the Norman Irish far harder than the Gaelic Irish because they lived in greater densities, in lower-lying areas, and in or near ports and other nexuses of trade. But the Gaelic Irish were not spared entirely. Though rural areas were more likely to suffer the bubonic rather than the pneumonic variant, “[w]hen the plague first struck virgin territory, it was often pneumonic.”
> 
>  _Bean sídhe_ , or [banshee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banshee), literally means “woman of the [fairy mounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aos_S%C3%AD#The_s.C3.ADdhe:_abodes_of_the_aes_s.C3.ADdhe)”; her lamentations are an omen that someone beloved of the hearer will shortly die. The [less-common _fear sídhe_ ,](https://books.google.com/books?id=61IX00wwuYYC&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=%22Fear+s%C3%ADdhe%22&source=bl&ots=vybIVe9KeS&sig=ZNVaO01P4kX9WST-gqYJMPMfgVw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKy8DPh_3RAhUFWxoKHYfSCMsQ6AEILDAE#v=onepage&q=farshee&f=false) pronounced “farshee,” means “man of the fairy mounds.” The ancient burial mounds, as well as pools, lakes, and the ocean to the west, were all said to be gateways to [the “Otherworld” of the ancient Celts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Otherworld#Irish_mythology); one of its names was _Tir na nÓg_ (Land of Youth).
> 
> The hardships of Fionn’s father’s day were in great part due to [the invasions of the Bruces of Scotland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_campaign_in_Ireland). However, also then ongoing were [a pan-European famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%9317) and, relatedly, [a decade of bad farming weather in Ireland](http://www.iancantwell.com/pdf/medclim.pdf#page=132). It’s generally believed that across Europe, continual malnutrition caused by crop failures and by war-related economic destruction left people far more immunologically vulnerable to _Y. pestis_ , the plague bacterium, than they otherwise might have been.
> 
> According to P.W. Joyce’s [_A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland_](http://www.libraryireland.com/SocialHistoryAncientIreland/I-IV-4.php) (1906), a _finè_ was “a group of persons related by blood within certain degrees of consanguinity, all residing in the same neighbourhood, but it was often applied in a much wider sense.” So, not the entire clan, but more than just one or two households. (The term “sept” was not used until the 19th century.) Based on their history and territory, I picked [Uí Ceinnselaig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C3%AD_Cheinnselaig) (Kinsella) as Fionn’s clan (and if I have gotten the naming conventions wrong, please tell me!). I picture his finè as made up of lesser-ranked non-nobles with varying (modest) amounts of property whose homestead was on land rented from one of the clan nobles, to whom they paid tribute in agricultural product. Per Joyce, Irish literature and the Brehon laws speak of the free farming classes “as a most important part of the community—as the foundation of society, and as the ultimate source of law and authority.”
> 
> The “great church” in Waterford would have been the Medieval Cathedral, built some time in the 13th century out of yellow limestone. What is now known as [Choristers’ Hall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-KgSRxH0Jk) was then the deanery, home to the church’s dean and to the priests who sang Mass.
> 
> A [_brat_](http://www.celticgarb.org/clothing/cloak.html) was a cloak or mantle. A [_dairt_](https://www.wordnik.com/words/dairt) was a yearling calf. A [_bawn_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bawn) was a cattle enclosure and, later, the term for a defensive tower. A [_támh-leacht_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallaght#Etymology) was a mass grave for plague victims; the word later became a place-name in various parts of Ireland. A _ráth_ properly means a [ringfort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringfort), but [in Joyce’s book](http://www.libraryireland.com/SocialHistoryAncientIreland/III-XVI-5.php) it refers to the rampart enclosing a homestead.


End file.
